The factors that contribute to a successfully executed project include good planning, competent project staff who carefully manage all constraints, the involvement of final users in the both the development and execution phases, ownership by senior managers who are convinced of the value to be gained from the project, and sound risk management procedures.

Achieving these factors is not a simple matter and, in practice, many projects do not meet expectations. Surveys show that only 28% can be classed as successful.

The use of formalised project methodologies are recommended to maximise success. Methodologies such as Projects in Controlled Environments (PRINCE2) have been refined over many years and have been proven to work. The formation of a Project Management Office (PMO) is another formalised means of managing modern enterprise-wide complex projects.

Read a different issue of the Management Brief - select from almost hot topics - there is sure to be one or more of interest to you.

Here are a few extracts from content we've added recently, based on topics you requested.

Benchmarking (Internal) project leads to development of valuable tool for clients.
To help its clients better understand and respond to the online mortgage marketplace and provide a value-added service, Mortgagebot LLC, Mequon, a player in the online loan origination market, analysed its aggregated partner data, interpreted it, and published the findings in a study they called Benchmarks 2007.

The company maintains about 4,000 real-time, consumer-direct mortgage web sites for more than 750 lenders nationwide, and the published study provided a number of benchmarks that clients could use to measure and compare their performance. The study was well-received by clients who found the it helped them gain a better understanding of their marketplace, their customers, and the trends shaping the industry.

Clients were able to use these benchmarks to sharpen the focus and direction of their online lending businesses. In a follow up to enable consumers to easily and quickly compare rates and fees from a wide selection of lenders, and to give their clients opportunity to expose their loan products to new prospects and compete directly with popular online loan portals and aggregators.

Mortgagebot introduced a new mortgage-shopping web site that was integrated in real time with the loan-product data they maintained for their clients. Client response to this new opportunity was outstanding, with nearly 33% agreeing to participate in t= he "beta" phase of the project.......read this research report.

Diversification Survival Strategy

A study of 67,000 firm-year observations over the period 1981 to 2003, examined product diversification and firm age, agency costs, survival, and firm organisational decisions through time, and found that firm age was strongly correlated with the decision to diversify and identified an important link between organisational form (the level of diversification) and firm.

Almost 90% of the firms in the sample began as specialised entities, concentrating their efforts within a single industry.

As the firms aged, they typically began to transition into new product lines.

Within about 20 years of their IPOs, nearly 50% all firms had diversified, and the majority of firms 30 years or older had diversified. = The older firms were also more diversified.

Only 15% of young firms (5 years old or less) were diversified, and young firms were less likely to add value by diversifying.

43% of the diversified firms traded at a premium relative to non-diversified firms in similar industries.

The annual mortality rate was 0.64% for diversified firms and 1.09% for non-diversified firms.

Conglomerates had lower mortality rates in of the 23 years studied.......read this research report

COER/GBN Global Survey

Global Survey on Business Improvement & Benchmarking

The verdict is in! Out over over 500 detailed responses from twenty countries the popularity of well-known improvement tools has been sampled.
Initial results provide a surprise bottom place ranking - SIX= SIGMA! The top five most popular were:

Customer (Client) Surveys were the most popular - used by 87% of organisations responding to survey

Informal Benchmarking (82%)

Mission and Vision Statements (80%)

(SWOT) - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (80%)

Employee Suggestion Schemes (72%)

Other results included Performance Benchmarking (56%)

Best Practice Benchmarking (42%).

Full analysis is available to survey participants.

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